About this title: A founder of a bank in rural Bangladesh shows how he combated poverty through microlending, the practice of making small loans to the poor in order to provide for basics and to encourage small scale private enterprise. The result was the breaking of the cycle of poverty and improved living standards. Yunus has been doing this since 1976 with little government funding, and his model has been replicated worldwide.
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Description: Good. 1586481983 Book could have shelf wear, or a bump, or sunfade to edges. These are new unread books from the publisher with one of these conditions. See are feedback as customers are satisfied in how we grade our books. Fast shipping and customer service is our number 1 priority! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9781891620119ISBN:1891620118
Description: Good. Hardcover ex-library book with dust jacket in good condition. All usual stamps and markings. Pages are clean and the binding is tight. read more
Description: Good. Dust Cover Missing. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. 1586481983 light shelf wear / edge wear cover / pages very good condition//"Buy with Confidence-Satisfaction Guaranteed! Customer Service Makes All the Difference. " read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Date Published: 2008-01-08
ISBN-13:9781586481988ISBN:1586481983
Description: New. Paperback. You are buying a Book in NEW condition with very light shelf wear to include very light edge and corner wear. Buy it Now! ! ! As always, thank you for buying this book from International Book Source, YOUR ONE source FOR ALL your BOOK related NEEDS. Please remember to CHOOSE carefully how QUICKLY you would like to RECEIVE this material FAST, or standard (on next page). Thanks again! ! ! ! read more
Description: Fine. 1891620118 THE BOOK AND DUST JACKET ARE IN FINE CONDITION, LIKE NEW. THE BINDING AND PAGES ARE TIGHT AND CLEAN. PUBLISHED BY PUBLIC AFFAIRS. read more
"In 'Banker to the Poor' Muhammad Yunus tells the inspiring story of how he has helped hundreds of thousands of people lift themselves out of poverty by establishing the Grameen Bank. Grameen lends micro-credit (very small loans) to the poorest of the poor without requiring collateral. In lieu of collateral, Grameen requires that its borrowers adhere to a strict set of rules. Yunus explains that these rules help borrowers develop the personal confidence and community infrastructure they need to succeed, and he fills his book with statistics and personal stories to back this up.
Towards the end of the book- during pauses in my reading, removed from Yunus' elegant prose and heartwarming stories- I realized (with disappointment) that Yunus is a proud capitalist. He champions the free-market, arguing that the only thing that has kept capitalism from working is that the poor have not been allowed to participate in it fully and he champions micro-lending, arguing that it can act as the free-market's great equalizer and help capitalism fulfill its potential. Yunus envisions a world where all are free to be capitalists and where investment capital is extended to those who want to pursue personal profit as much as to those who want pursue nobler, social enterprises.
I am not surprised that I was eventually turned-off by Yunus' gospel because I have always sided with George Orwell's gospel: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
""The able bodied poor don't want or need charity. . . . All they need is financial capital."
This book was the most exciting example of free market approaches to eradicating poverty that I've read, and perhaps the most effective method currently being tried.
In 1976, while out in the field of rural Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, an economist at a prestigious Bengali university, was struck by the immense penury all around him. A lot of the poor he encountered wanted to get out of the cycle of poverty that they were stuck in through the usury of local "moneylenders". He quickly deduced that the primary reason for this economic immobility was because the poor were denied access to credit. Banks would not deal with the poor who were illiterate and had no collateral or apparent skills. As a result, in order to get access to capital to finance their income generating activities, they were dependent on "moneylenders" whose interest rates would wipe out any profits in excess of basic sustenance.
Yunus took matters into his own hands and after doing a few preliminary studies, concluded that poor people don't need collateral, as they have a very strong incentive to pay back their loans because further access to loans is their only hope to get out of poverty. He found that people are built to survive and develop really creative ways to generate income out of desperation - all they need is a chance to execute their ideas. What started out in 1976 as a $27, out-of-pocket lending experiment to 42 borrowers, evolved into Grameen bank, which now has millions of borrowers, with billions of dollars loaned, and a loan recovery rate of 98%.
Grameen bank has spawned many replicator projects that follow the microfinance model to the world's poorest all over the world, as well as a slew of other poor-centered, self-sustainable, for-profit ventures - which include farming projects, cell phone and internet services, life insurance, retirement funds, health insurance, etc. This growth of "socially-conscious" entrepreneurs is getting huge numbers of people out of poverty, and Yunnus believes can rid the world of poverty (as defined by having food, clean water, a roof over your head, beds for all members of the family, and education for all the children) within a generation of two - pushing poverty into museums, where it belongs.
Yunus is very inspirational and writes a very detailed autobiography of the experiences that led him to pursue this goal, and the steps he had to take in order to achieve it... and outlines a vision of a poverty-free world. It also offers a great "worms-eye" view of poverty from the ground, instead of from the conceptual view from theory. Very practical.
Grameen repeatedly refused loans from the World Bank because that would compromise their leadership structure, as World Bank money comes with strings attached. The book is also very critical of government aid, as "Foreign aid becomes a kind of charity for the powerful while the poor get poorer," where "Most rich nations use their foreign aid budgets mainly to employ their own people and to sell their own goods, with poverty reduction as an afterthought." It targets the small business sector, or otherwise not the lowest rungs of the latter - and quickly get corrupted and overtaken by wealthier opportunists. "Aid-funding projects create massive bureaucracies, which quickly become corrupt and inefficient, incurring huge losses. . . . Aid money still goes to expand government spending, often acting against the interests of the market economy.""
"I picked this up because I was interested in learning a little more about Grameen bank, which as I understand it is pretty much the granddaddy of micro-credit organizations. I very much enjoyed the book. It's divided into about four parts: a quick autobiography of Yunus, a quick history of how Grameen got started and its principles, some criticism of some current (actually now somewhat dated) movements in global development, and a summary of Yunus's vision of social entrepreneurship.
I always find autobiographies a little weird, and Yunus' panegyric to his own organization doesn't exactly read as unbiased. However, I think he does a fair job of addressing some of the criticisms I've heard made of Grameen realistically, without whitewashing. For example, I find it fascinating that he is willing to admit that there may casualties related to the organization of the bank (eg, female bank workers harassed or borrowers bullied) but argues that upholding certain principles are worth the risk.
I'd definitely recommend this to anyone interested in micro-credit, it was an engaging and very informative read. On a side note, I also found myself thinking a lot about Hernando de Soto's book The Mystery of Capital while I was reading this- the two books could be interesting to read together side-by-side."
"sebenernya ragu2 sih, apakah benar buku ini yang kemaren kubaca. soalnya yang aku baca versi terjemahannya, jd gak yakin judul aslinya apa. tapi tak apalah, anggap saja memang buku ini, hehe.
buku ini membosankan, meskipun sebenernya pemikirannya bagus. entah karena stamina membacaku uda gak setangguh dulu, atau karena aku pribadi uda kebiasaan baca buku2 terbitannya resist ato insist, jadinya buku ini berasa kurang 'emosional', hahaha.
kerennya pemikiran Muhammad Yunus adalah karena dia tidak berusaha melawan arus. dia mengikuti arus, dan mengambil 'belokan2' yang tepat sehingga arus tidak lantas menghanyutkannya *alah. misalnya, dia bilang bahwa solusi atas peledakan penduduk bukan melalui KB, tapi lewat pendidikan tinggi. dia juga bilang donor atau amal tidak akan membantu orang miskin keluar dari permasalahannya, itu justru akan membunuh inisiatif mereka. jadi amal sebenernya hanyalah penghibur bagi hati kecil kita, buka solusi mengentas kemiskinan...
ehm, jadi kesindir deh.
well, sayang buatku gaya penulisannya kurang gimana gitu. seandainya saja riwayat Grameen ini ditulis ala Google Story, pasti bintangnya bakal lebih dari tiga deh :)"
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